"So what we can see in France (and I think the same thing is starting elsewhere) is an explicit admission by the establishment parties that the political system has been transformed. It’s turned into an elite oligarchy while no-one was paying attention, and those who don’t like it can get stuffed. "
Duh. This is what I have been saying for a long time now, and it is not a particularly deep insight on my part.
If the Establishment, the elites are good at nothing else, they are very good at figuring out whom to co-opt, whom to buy off, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore. They are very good at getting and keeping power.
The elites also have an inherent advantage in that they have the levers of power, and they would not have the levers of power if they were not willing to do whatever it takes to get their hands on them.
There is a long tradition in political science that disputed the Liberal assumption that "programs" were any important. Walter Bagehot, the 19th century English political commentator, argued that the point of elections was to assign responsibility and, should the government fail, "vote the bums out.". Arrow, following up on a long tradition that goes back to 18th century French mathematician-philosopher Condorcet, noted that it's logically impossible to determine what exactly it is that "the people" want, even if humans behaved with impossibly "logical" precision. Long tradition of political behavior research have consistently found that people don't know what exactly they want from politics (policywise) and that's not what people base their voting decisions on anyways. Yet, all three strands converge on one thing: people can identify and evaluate "failure" when they see it and punishing "bad" politicians who failed them is a strong motivator behind voting.
Given these, it is strange indeed that PMC, including many "political scientists," should still see politics as operating in the realm of "programs.". (but this is true, especially among my own (former) professional tribe.). I always wondered if this is because of the "hammer-and-nail" syndrome: I used to teach game theory in my previous incarnation, and my first lecture always started with "we assume that people behave 'rationally,' not because that's true, but because we want to use (simple) math and trying to imagine how people 'really' behave would make things too complicated." But, somehow, people came to believe "rational" behavior is a compliment, not attributed simplemindedness forced upon us because we can't do really complex math....
"Long tradition of political behavior research have consistently found that people don't know what exactly they want from politics (policywise) and that's not what people base their voting decisions on anyways. Yet, all three strands converge on one thing: people can identify and evaluate "failure" when they see it and punishing "bad" politicians who failed them is a strong motivator behind voting."
This obfuscation of elections, policies and politicians is entirely intentional. It gives the people the illusion of influence, even as everything is stage-managed from behind the scenes.
Good points. Agree with that. The Obfuscation of elections.. is intentional. I would add to that we are kept apart from each other and our stories by the political class, the TV and paper media, even film and documentary making. They are apart from us and keep us apart from each other and our daily lives. I know the detail of what goes on around the country because I know a lot of people and I keep in touch with them. Major happenings around Scotland are covered 3, 4 ,5 or 6 years after the fact if they are covered at all and much is omitted. Cultural stuff happens locally by the people themselves and only reported on to embarass us and Scotland is still a fairly diverse nation of people. I am absolutely certain the same tactic is used in England and Wales. Countries that I do not know very well. Mr Aurelian's PMC just does not identify with any of us. Incompetent, lazy bastards that they are.
Congratulations - a neat essay on our current predicament. The only flaw that I can find is that the emphasis above seems to be mostly on control by politicians and political activity, and the power of money is minimised. This aspect can probably be seen more clearly in the case of the US, (or even to an extent the EU) where all political activity is dominated and fully controlled by the wealthy - whether through personal or corporate wealth.
But the same applies in the UK too - it's just better hidden. For example, one small area of visibility is the fact that many UK politicians have gone to the same elite and expensive schools, (despite Keir Starmers dad being a toolmaker, and Angela Rayner being decidedly working class), and this has been so for a very long time. The power of inherited and corporate wealth needs more scrutiny in any analysis of government such as here.
Well, I did say it was a total system, but I think that wealth, as wealth, probably has less influence than it once did, because individuals can now become wealthy outside the system. The old system was much more heavily based on inherited wealth than is the case today.
I think the political divide in most Western countries can be defined as PARTISANS of the Progressive Society (PS) vs CRITICS of the PS. Not even opponents, as any political party that actually opposes the PS would be quickly banned or disbanded (like Golden Dawn in Greece, or NPD in Germany).
It you apply this pattern, it works almost in every Western country. Reform UK and the RN in France are critics of the PS, but not ferocious opponents, while the rest of the parties are basically the same as they agree on all the tenets of the PS.
And the share of the vote seems to be the same: 2/3 of the electorate choose PS parties for one reason or another, 1/3 vote anti-PS.
What we'll get if critics of the PS get to power is to be seen. Probably not much, one reform here and there, but the structure of the PS will remain until some catastrophic event forces regime change.
Wow, Aurelien, you have written essays in the past that have 'clicked,' but your latest is superb. Ideas, feelings, suspicions, that were jumbled about in my brain, suddenly assembled themselves into a coherent pattern. This helps explain why, in the past 15 years, I have been feeling so aligned with my husband's relatives, here in rural Western New York State. They are all what I call 'hereditary Republicans' who would rather have their eyeballs ripped out than vote for a Democrat. They are the 'deplorables,' whose middle-aged males are dying the 'deaths of despair.' They are the struggling dairy farmers, long-haul truck drivers, tool and dye machinists, volunteer firemen, dedicated makers of sauerkraut, canners of jams and jellies as well as that local specialty, stuffed banana peppers, bakers of zucchini bread, attenders of innumerable family reunions on July and August weekends.
While I am East Coast -born, child of a family of union organizers, Democrat, elite woman's college graduate, ardent campaigner who spent months working for Obama in Denver in 2008. We 'turned Colorado Blue!' I think of the next few years as 'The Great Betrayal.' That was when I discovered Naked Capitalism, BTW.
Once upon a time, my husband's ancestors were Grange members, back when the Grange movement was an active political organization allied against Big Railroad and Big Banks. A number of them still run the local Pomona Grange, over the border in Pennsylvania. But now they feel powerless, they lean towards Trump's 'drain the swamp,' they watch their young people making the agonizing choice between leaving family, friends, familiar hills and woods, in order to find a decent job, or to remain and live with low wages, minimal health and dental care (teeth are definitely a 'class marker' around this area; so many people are missing their front teeth) and worse, being despised and kicked around by the elites in power. They are intolerant of 'immigrants,' first because available jobs are scarce and provide marginal livings, and, second, because they all do their own house cleaning and child care.
Apologies for going on so long. Thank you for writing.
"That is a minimum condition, but I would add, as a good socialist, that the system should also try, as far as possible, to ensure that the interests of everyone are taken account of in the making of policy."
Really? I always thought Democracy, back when we had it, was a mere gentleman's agreement to jockey for power non-violently through a set of agreed upon rules. The losers would accept their defeat and in return, the winners wouldn't throw them in prison.
Therefore, it was a contest to see whose interests would be disregarded. I always thought that the most pure form of Democracy was practiced by Tammany Hall. There was the contract theory of democracy come in practice! You voted for the party that promised to help you, personally, and if you wanted more favors from them, you just voted more.
It is not just "arguably possible to have democracy without elections," it is historical fact: ancient Greeks recognised the incompatibility of elections with democracy and so divided power between democratic assemblies open to the whole population (direct democracy) that met once a month on average and bodies chosen by sortition that controlled day-to-day governance (democratic representative government). Arguably, these were the only true democracies since the real levers of power were all in the hands of the people at large, the vast majority of whom are ordinary (non-elite). For an understanding of how such a system can be applied to the realities of today's highly complex, technologically drive societies, I recommend you read The Democracy Manifesto by Waxman and McCulloch.
Well, there is that, of course, and I'd add "Contre les elections", by David van Reybrouck. But I was thinking of something more fundamental than even sortition: the decision-making process in some African societies, for example, of the search for consensus no matter how long it takes. The Liberal model of politics is competition. It doesn't have to be like that.
Swiss democracy works better than Athens ever did. China's and Singapore's, too. All three say their brand of democracy is working pretty well, thanks, and their countries' democratic stats support their claim.
If we accept the premise that competing insiders control institutions and monopolize power, with at best vague, weak, and only periodic input from the masses, the most outsiders can hope for are sane and capable governors not wholly driven by greed, hatred, ignorance, and delusion. Given history, even that looks like a big ask. There are occasional episodes, here and there, now and then, by accident or intent, that seem relatively peaceful and prosperous. However it's not clear how they come about, and even if the decisive factors could be isolated with a degree of confidence, it's altogether uncertain they can be repeated, since they emerge from a matrix of the imponderably contingent. And thus we go on.
Power eventually ends up in the hands of sociopaths, because sociopaths are precisely the people who do whatever it takes to get power. The problem is that, whatever sociopaths are good at, they are not good at building lasting coalitions.
As a matter of terminology I favor “psychopath” over “sociopath” to emphasize nature over nurture, genetics over jurisprudence. But that’s just me.
Whichever you prefer, it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily reductive to assert that everyone with power is criminal or predatory, as if to say that when it comes to power, every use is abuse. There’s an element of truth to that, but as in so many relational matters … it’s complicated. There are degrees and qualities, distributions rather than binaries. Just look around. Everywhere there are more or less durable coalitions, and how could there not be? Without hierarchy and cooperation—coalition, in a word—organization crumbles and, as a practical matter, power dissipates, and not without consequences. Those unable to hang together hang separately.
I’m not wildly optimistic about our species’ prospects, but I resist the assumption that the distinctive talents and tendencies of s-paths or p-paths, which seem real enough, inevitably win out, and that a demon in a human’s skin perches atop every pyramid. It’s a bit “Wild in the Streets,” trust no one over 30 to my taste. (No disrespect to Shelley Winters.) But that’s about as close to Pollyanna-dom as I get. I quibble but largely agree. Lord Acton was onto something in his quip. Whether the pinnacle acts as factory or finishing school, his cautionary observation about absolute power is too grave to ignore—as grave as oligarchy seems inescapable, a fact of human sociability.
It’s past time to actually read (well, skim) Michels’ “Political Parties.” I can interleave it with kouros’s Weil recommendation, “On the Abolition of All Political Parties.” Preliminary impression: Michels: organized power unavoidably leads to oligarchy; Weil: organized power should be abolished because it’s neither good nor just. I sympathize with Weil while feeling I’m hearing out a precocious child. The effort to dispense with illusions in Michels I find exhilarating in its acuity, albeit depressing.
Organizationally speaking, complexity necessitates specialization, specialization means inequality, inequality sets boundaries, and boundaries mean in and out, up and down. Oligarchy is born. This is inevitable. Until we’re all clones, Aurelien’s PMC, that problematic professional and managerial class, like the poor will always be with us. At best, driven by power dynamics and in response to changing conditions, various kludges to limit advantage may emerge, albeit among the already powerful, whether old guard or upstart. Which brings us back to do (a deer). There’s no repeal of human nature and the motives arising from it. A certain ingenuity and adaptability with social arrangements might come with that genetic endowment. On the whole, though, the jockeying for dominance in a shifting environment seems both like the weather, unstable and too complex to model.
Hold the phone. That’s not to say that eventually means to mitigate the central tendencies might not come into play. We do live in history, and times change. For example, if some motives for seeking advantage derive from scarcity, to the extent those have less bearing, cooperation might become more attractive, with the dark triad withering into a psychic appendix. Plus there’s CRISPR! I won’t hold my breath either. Besides, in certain circumstances a little ferality may be just what Darwin ordered. The point is, theoretically in some future the iron law might not be as unyielding. That possibility, if not exactly a prospect, suggests a path, even if it’s unclear as yet how to construct it out of anything but imaginative thin air and a trillion trillion rolls of the dice.
I suppose it's a kind of compliment that people usually ask me to write longer and more inclusive essays rather than shorter and less inclusive ones. I did think of Michels and Weil (and I don't find her arguments at all convincing, even dangerous) but there wasn't space. But yes, if you think that any system will eventually be taken over by psychopaths, then you might as well give up now. The counter-argument is, of course, that it depends on the incentives you create. A couple of hundred years ago, the incentives and the surrounding ethical context were quite different, and I don't think you'd instantly characterise, say, the political classes of nineteenth century France or Britain as entirely composed of psychopaths.
You got that a thrust of the reply to FF was to take gentle exception to equating leadership with sociopathy, right? There's a grain of truth in the formulation, but it's reductive, with counterfactuals in plain sight.
About the centrality of incentives I heartily agree. Local interests are not necessarily those of the whole. A simple example: war is calamitous—but it's good news for certain sectors of the economy. So of course those sectors fund think tanks and lobby policymakers to advocate for it. Who would refuse to beat swords into ploughshares or, in a contemporary vein, support the elusive peace dividend of the '90s?They would! There you have the essence of elite dynamics.
It's why theories that posit "national interest" struggle to explain seemingly unrealistic, counterproductive, and irrational policies like, say, the current U.S. stance toward Israel. They miss the boat because national interest, in the sense of a more or less dispassionate analysis of the greatest good for the greatest number, isn't the engine or rudder of ships of state. Competition among parochial interests is. For good or ill, that's about incentives. Without addressing them, good luck turning such leviathans around.
Shorter: "What's good for General Motors is good for America." Except when it isn't.
So we re-read (and then read again until we have internalised their analysis) C. Wright Mills’ »Power Elite« (1956) and, of course, Robert Michels’ »Political Parties« (1911). Then we accept that the average (»the people«) is always right and there is no reason to despise the so-called masses, i.e. ourselve). Based on that we adept the Greek poleis’ system for our times. That would be the best we could have, I believe. How can we get there?
Point is the people cannot vote on issues of the day.
They in fact simply cannot meaningfully vote.
Casting one vote every few years for this or that Party is hardly 'voting' on issues as meant in a working democracy.
It should be understood and emphasised that our 'democratic' mechanisms are makeshifts quite openly. Physical and technological constraints have always applied.
A nation is not Athens of old.
This 'representative' idea is a makeshift. The best we can do.
And Party politics again, a makeshift. The best we can do.
And together they leave the people without a voice. With 'pretended' voice.
That's a simple fact. As simple and obvious as the fact that no one, in politics or outside, is calling for an improvement in the situation.
It seems to be universally accepted that this is the mechanism with which we will always have to work. That this is the best than can be done.
There's no one even calls for the question to be investigated.
But there is something that can be done.
There could be a parallel mechanism or 'thing' that expresses the will of the people in a way of indisputable veracity, authenticity. Nothing to do with the government.
But which, being the authentic voice of the people, the govts. would be wise to heed and would know that.
The people have gotten themselves into a cowed and beaten humiliated and humble position where they not only 'speak when spoken to' but actually never get to speak at all.
And so cowed are they that they never think a solution could be found within themselves: i.e. they have struck themselves dumb. They believe they can only speak if the government lets them speak.
Those who retain some belief in agency and power of the people generally turn in desperation to advocating some kind of violence one way or the other. Which, naturally, most do not want. A coarse, crude methodology that generally fails to improve things in the end anyway, I'm told.
But there is a way it could be done in fact. The people can have a voice and use it at any time and demonstrate that it is their truth authentic voice - not some corrupted result of trickery and manipulation, lies and deceit.
The power to speak could be in everyone's, anyone's pocket or purse:
When any person can see trough the rethorics (or conceptual models, or stereotypes) and see the people, their goals and their problems, you can not see them anymore as idiots, retrogrades or "far right populists". I experienced the same, fortunately very young. Is difficult to talk with people that are unable to see this, because they don't look the reality, they look and abstraction that believe real (they commite hypostasis).This guy (I mean Aurelien), also helps me with cohesion and connection between ideas, and also he gives birth to new ones.
At least, here in Spain it is obvious that we dont have democracy, not only the one mentioned by Aurelien (the satisfaction of interests of "people"), if not the estrict and estructural one: there is not separation of powers or any mechanysm of control of the power. Also, there is not real periodism and the "forth power" have degenerated. We don't have representation, we vote vor lists made for the chief of the parties (that receive money from the State ¿do you see the perversion? they have achieved the control of the State) that swear obbedience. All the parties weave temporary alliances between them for avhieve the power, using the autonomous administration of provincies for repart quotes of power. It is a fucking network of clientelism, based on a hierarchy of privileges and favours (this network is huge: medias, menay instituiton, ONG's , companies, but also the vanity and the Ego of people). Of coures, all the appearent spectrum is jus the same product with a cosmethical difference, like any other comercial product. Aurelien sais that is a One Partie olygarchical, here we say "partitocracy", that is more or less the same. The parties, their internal struggles ara just these fight between one single elite (with the huge and variant host of parasite and symbiotic that contribuite to this): the oligarchy that oscillate and change in their continious fight for the power, against other parties and also against the own partie. It is just fight for the power with no ethics further this.
It seems to me that it confirms one thing: fundamentally, as long as the elites remain united around their common interests and despite constant internal competition for power, there can be no major political change.
For such change to occur, the situation has to be critical enough for a faction within the elites (a counter-elite) to decide to join (or rather recruit) a sufficiently large part of the population by capitalizing on its deep dissatisfaction. And, unfortunately, at this stage and with rare exceptions, it never happens without violence and civil war.
It happened all along human history. In France, we've seen this phenomenon at work twice and in two different forms in recent years: during the "gilets jaunes" episode and during the last elections. Twice, the elites lined up to prevent any attempt at change. And the population, whether in the streets or at the ballot box, has been unable to achieve anything...
And this is somehow what Mélenchon is counting on : a "young, good-thinking Liberal middle classes" counter-elite that will organise and use the immigrant communities to topple the system in his favor.
At the other end of the political spectrum, the question is whether a populist, sovereignist and/or conservative counter-elite will be able to organize the rest of the population.
And of course, what the actual elite will decide to do about that. So far, they've only applied the old principle of divide and conquer but, as the economic and social situation keeps worsening, there is a very good chance it turn real nasty. What's happening in England right now could just be a harbinger of things to come…
Another very interesting piece. An increasing number of bloggers and pundits are now talking in the same vein, whether they call the new elite the PMC, the Blob, the Deep State or whatever.
Of course the pathetic 59% turnout in the UK general election means that the Labour government's mandate and legitimacy is even weaker than it looks at first glance, with just 20% of eligible adults voting for them. It already looks clear that since the growth spurt they talked about is not even remotely on the horizon, their strategy is to manage economic decline by taxing the better off, doing just enough for the poorest to keep them away from Reform and continue to allow mass migration to boost headline GDP figures and supply cheap labour.
This may work for a year or two or even longer but there are widespread forecasts that of another 2008-style economic crisis arriving in the West in the next few years and then we may well see at last, the PMC finally overthrown by populist forces in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.
'Since the collapse in the Scottish Nationalist vote played a large part in bringing the Labour government to power,..'
It played no part at all in bringing the Labour party to power. They didn't need any Scottish seats. You could give every Scottish nationalist vote (many nationalists vote Labour anyway - perhaps 40% of their vote and more- but that's a side issue) in every election held since 1934 (1979 referendum fallout included) and it would not have changed a single UK government.
"So what we can see in France (and I think the same thing is starting elsewhere) is an explicit admission by the establishment parties that the political system has been transformed. It’s turned into an elite oligarchy while no-one was paying attention, and those who don’t like it can get stuffed. "
Duh. This is what I have been saying for a long time now, and it is not a particularly deep insight on my part.
If the Establishment, the elites are good at nothing else, they are very good at figuring out whom to co-opt, whom to buy off, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore. They are very good at getting and keeping power.
The elites also have an inherent advantage in that they have the levers of power, and they would not have the levers of power if they were not willing to do whatever it takes to get their hands on them.
There is a long tradition in political science that disputed the Liberal assumption that "programs" were any important. Walter Bagehot, the 19th century English political commentator, argued that the point of elections was to assign responsibility and, should the government fail, "vote the bums out.". Arrow, following up on a long tradition that goes back to 18th century French mathematician-philosopher Condorcet, noted that it's logically impossible to determine what exactly it is that "the people" want, even if humans behaved with impossibly "logical" precision. Long tradition of political behavior research have consistently found that people don't know what exactly they want from politics (policywise) and that's not what people base their voting decisions on anyways. Yet, all three strands converge on one thing: people can identify and evaluate "failure" when they see it and punishing "bad" politicians who failed them is a strong motivator behind voting.
Given these, it is strange indeed that PMC, including many "political scientists," should still see politics as operating in the realm of "programs.". (but this is true, especially among my own (former) professional tribe.). I always wondered if this is because of the "hammer-and-nail" syndrome: I used to teach game theory in my previous incarnation, and my first lecture always started with "we assume that people behave 'rationally,' not because that's true, but because we want to use (simple) math and trying to imagine how people 'really' behave would make things too complicated." But, somehow, people came to believe "rational" behavior is a compliment, not attributed simplemindedness forced upon us because we can't do really complex math....
"Long tradition of political behavior research have consistently found that people don't know what exactly they want from politics (policywise) and that's not what people base their voting decisions on anyways. Yet, all three strands converge on one thing: people can identify and evaluate "failure" when they see it and punishing "bad" politicians who failed them is a strong motivator behind voting."
This obfuscation of elections, policies and politicians is entirely intentional. It gives the people the illusion of influence, even as everything is stage-managed from behind the scenes.
Good points. Agree with that. The Obfuscation of elections.. is intentional. I would add to that we are kept apart from each other and our stories by the political class, the TV and paper media, even film and documentary making. They are apart from us and keep us apart from each other and our daily lives. I know the detail of what goes on around the country because I know a lot of people and I keep in touch with them. Major happenings around Scotland are covered 3, 4 ,5 or 6 years after the fact if they are covered at all and much is omitted. Cultural stuff happens locally by the people themselves and only reported on to embarass us and Scotland is still a fairly diverse nation of people. I am absolutely certain the same tactic is used in England and Wales. Countries that I do not know very well. Mr Aurelian's PMC just does not identify with any of us. Incompetent, lazy bastards that they are.
Congratulations - a neat essay on our current predicament. The only flaw that I can find is that the emphasis above seems to be mostly on control by politicians and political activity, and the power of money is minimised. This aspect can probably be seen more clearly in the case of the US, (or even to an extent the EU) where all political activity is dominated and fully controlled by the wealthy - whether through personal or corporate wealth.
But the same applies in the UK too - it's just better hidden. For example, one small area of visibility is the fact that many UK politicians have gone to the same elite and expensive schools, (despite Keir Starmers dad being a toolmaker, and Angela Rayner being decidedly working class), and this has been so for a very long time. The power of inherited and corporate wealth needs more scrutiny in any analysis of government such as here.
Well, I did say it was a total system, but I think that wealth, as wealth, probably has less influence than it once did, because individuals can now become wealthy outside the system. The old system was much more heavily based on inherited wealth than is the case today.
Thank you Aurelien🙏
The "Centre" is swallowing everything, left and right. Until one day it cannot hold.
I think the political divide in most Western countries can be defined as PARTISANS of the Progressive Society (PS) vs CRITICS of the PS. Not even opponents, as any political party that actually opposes the PS would be quickly banned or disbanded (like Golden Dawn in Greece, or NPD in Germany).
It you apply this pattern, it works almost in every Western country. Reform UK and the RN in France are critics of the PS, but not ferocious opponents, while the rest of the parties are basically the same as they agree on all the tenets of the PS.
And the share of the vote seems to be the same: 2/3 of the electorate choose PS parties for one reason or another, 1/3 vote anti-PS.
What we'll get if critics of the PS get to power is to be seen. Probably not much, one reform here and there, but the structure of the PS will remain until some catastrophic event forces regime change.
Wow, Aurelien, you have written essays in the past that have 'clicked,' but your latest is superb. Ideas, feelings, suspicions, that were jumbled about in my brain, suddenly assembled themselves into a coherent pattern. This helps explain why, in the past 15 years, I have been feeling so aligned with my husband's relatives, here in rural Western New York State. They are all what I call 'hereditary Republicans' who would rather have their eyeballs ripped out than vote for a Democrat. They are the 'deplorables,' whose middle-aged males are dying the 'deaths of despair.' They are the struggling dairy farmers, long-haul truck drivers, tool and dye machinists, volunteer firemen, dedicated makers of sauerkraut, canners of jams and jellies as well as that local specialty, stuffed banana peppers, bakers of zucchini bread, attenders of innumerable family reunions on July and August weekends.
While I am East Coast -born, child of a family of union organizers, Democrat, elite woman's college graduate, ardent campaigner who spent months working for Obama in Denver in 2008. We 'turned Colorado Blue!' I think of the next few years as 'The Great Betrayal.' That was when I discovered Naked Capitalism, BTW.
Once upon a time, my husband's ancestors were Grange members, back when the Grange movement was an active political organization allied against Big Railroad and Big Banks. A number of them still run the local Pomona Grange, over the border in Pennsylvania. But now they feel powerless, they lean towards Trump's 'drain the swamp,' they watch their young people making the agonizing choice between leaving family, friends, familiar hills and woods, in order to find a decent job, or to remain and live with low wages, minimal health and dental care (teeth are definitely a 'class marker' around this area; so many people are missing their front teeth) and worse, being despised and kicked around by the elites in power. They are intolerant of 'immigrants,' first because available jobs are scarce and provide marginal livings, and, second, because they all do their own house cleaning and child care.
Apologies for going on so long. Thank you for writing.
"That is a minimum condition, but I would add, as a good socialist, that the system should also try, as far as possible, to ensure that the interests of everyone are taken account of in the making of policy."
Really? I always thought Democracy, back when we had it, was a mere gentleman's agreement to jockey for power non-violently through a set of agreed upon rules. The losers would accept their defeat and in return, the winners wouldn't throw them in prison.
Therefore, it was a contest to see whose interests would be disregarded. I always thought that the most pure form of Democracy was practiced by Tammany Hall. There was the contract theory of democracy come in practice! You voted for the party that promised to help you, personally, and if you wanted more favors from them, you just voted more.
It is not just "arguably possible to have democracy without elections," it is historical fact: ancient Greeks recognised the incompatibility of elections with democracy and so divided power between democratic assemblies open to the whole population (direct democracy) that met once a month on average and bodies chosen by sortition that controlled day-to-day governance (democratic representative government). Arguably, these were the only true democracies since the real levers of power were all in the hands of the people at large, the vast majority of whom are ordinary (non-elite). For an understanding of how such a system can be applied to the realities of today's highly complex, technologically drive societies, I recommend you read The Democracy Manifesto by Waxman and McCulloch.
Well, there is that, of course, and I'd add "Contre les elections", by David van Reybrouck. But I was thinking of something more fundamental than even sortition: the decision-making process in some African societies, for example, of the search for consensus no matter how long it takes. The Liberal model of politics is competition. It doesn't have to be like that.
Swiss democracy works better than Athens ever did. China's and Singapore's, too. All three say their brand of democracy is working pretty well, thanks, and their countries' democratic stats support their claim.
https://herecomeschina.substack.com/p/the-battle-for-democracy?r=16k
If we accept the premise that competing insiders control institutions and monopolize power, with at best vague, weak, and only periodic input from the masses, the most outsiders can hope for are sane and capable governors not wholly driven by greed, hatred, ignorance, and delusion. Given history, even that looks like a big ask. There are occasional episodes, here and there, now and then, by accident or intent, that seem relatively peaceful and prosperous. However it's not clear how they come about, and even if the decisive factors could be isolated with a degree of confidence, it's altogether uncertain they can be repeated, since they emerge from a matrix of the imponderably contingent. And thus we go on.
Learn well The Iron Law Of Oligarchy.
Power eventually ends up in the hands of sociopaths, because sociopaths are precisely the people who do whatever it takes to get power. The problem is that, whatever sociopaths are good at, they are not good at building lasting coalitions.
As a matter of terminology I favor “psychopath” over “sociopath” to emphasize nature over nurture, genetics over jurisprudence. But that’s just me.
Whichever you prefer, it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily reductive to assert that everyone with power is criminal or predatory, as if to say that when it comes to power, every use is abuse. There’s an element of truth to that, but as in so many relational matters … it’s complicated. There are degrees and qualities, distributions rather than binaries. Just look around. Everywhere there are more or less durable coalitions, and how could there not be? Without hierarchy and cooperation—coalition, in a word—organization crumbles and, as a practical matter, power dissipates, and not without consequences. Those unable to hang together hang separately.
I’m not wildly optimistic about our species’ prospects, but I resist the assumption that the distinctive talents and tendencies of s-paths or p-paths, which seem real enough, inevitably win out, and that a demon in a human’s skin perches atop every pyramid. It’s a bit “Wild in the Streets,” trust no one over 30 to my taste. (No disrespect to Shelley Winters.) But that’s about as close to Pollyanna-dom as I get. I quibble but largely agree. Lord Acton was onto something in his quip. Whether the pinnacle acts as factory or finishing school, his cautionary observation about absolute power is too grave to ignore—as grave as oligarchy seems inescapable, a fact of human sociability.
It’s past time to actually read (well, skim) Michels’ “Political Parties.” I can interleave it with kouros’s Weil recommendation, “On the Abolition of All Political Parties.” Preliminary impression: Michels: organized power unavoidably leads to oligarchy; Weil: organized power should be abolished because it’s neither good nor just. I sympathize with Weil while feeling I’m hearing out a precocious child. The effort to dispense with illusions in Michels I find exhilarating in its acuity, albeit depressing.
Organizationally speaking, complexity necessitates specialization, specialization means inequality, inequality sets boundaries, and boundaries mean in and out, up and down. Oligarchy is born. This is inevitable. Until we’re all clones, Aurelien’s PMC, that problematic professional and managerial class, like the poor will always be with us. At best, driven by power dynamics and in response to changing conditions, various kludges to limit advantage may emerge, albeit among the already powerful, whether old guard or upstart. Which brings us back to do (a deer). There’s no repeal of human nature and the motives arising from it. A certain ingenuity and adaptability with social arrangements might come with that genetic endowment. On the whole, though, the jockeying for dominance in a shifting environment seems both like the weather, unstable and too complex to model.
Hold the phone. That’s not to say that eventually means to mitigate the central tendencies might not come into play. We do live in history, and times change. For example, if some motives for seeking advantage derive from scarcity, to the extent those have less bearing, cooperation might become more attractive, with the dark triad withering into a psychic appendix. Plus there’s CRISPR! I won’t hold my breath either. Besides, in certain circumstances a little ferality may be just what Darwin ordered. The point is, theoretically in some future the iron law might not be as unyielding. That possibility, if not exactly a prospect, suggests a path, even if it’s unclear as yet how to construct it out of anything but imaginative thin air and a trillion trillion rolls of the dice.
I suppose it's a kind of compliment that people usually ask me to write longer and more inclusive essays rather than shorter and less inclusive ones. I did think of Michels and Weil (and I don't find her arguments at all convincing, even dangerous) but there wasn't space. But yes, if you think that any system will eventually be taken over by psychopaths, then you might as well give up now. The counter-argument is, of course, that it depends on the incentives you create. A couple of hundred years ago, the incentives and the surrounding ethical context were quite different, and I don't think you'd instantly characterise, say, the political classes of nineteenth century France or Britain as entirely composed of psychopaths.
The man himself!
You got that a thrust of the reply to FF was to take gentle exception to equating leadership with sociopathy, right? There's a grain of truth in the formulation, but it's reductive, with counterfactuals in plain sight.
About the centrality of incentives I heartily agree. Local interests are not necessarily those of the whole. A simple example: war is calamitous—but it's good news for certain sectors of the economy. So of course those sectors fund think tanks and lobby policymakers to advocate for it. Who would refuse to beat swords into ploughshares or, in a contemporary vein, support the elusive peace dividend of the '90s?They would! There you have the essence of elite dynamics.
It's why theories that posit "national interest" struggle to explain seemingly unrealistic, counterproductive, and irrational policies like, say, the current U.S. stance toward Israel. They miss the boat because national interest, in the sense of a more or less dispassionate analysis of the greatest good for the greatest number, isn't the engine or rudder of ships of state. Competition among parochial interests is. For good or ill, that's about incentives. Without addressing them, good luck turning such leviathans around.
Shorter: "What's good for General Motors is good for America." Except when it isn't.
@Dingusansich
Cue "Deteriorata":
https://youtu.be/faU-SK0pHCI?si=78nhLTBc9lM45WkA
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Or maybe cue up some thing less depressing?
https://youtu.be/nHR_guYzB20?si=AhmqQg05rubQ1GvV
I've chuckled more than once at the droll "brevette Pfc." in your handle. Thank you for that, and the links.
So we re-read (and then read again until we have internalised their analysis) C. Wright Mills’ »Power Elite« (1956) and, of course, Robert Michels’ »Political Parties« (1911). Then we accept that the average (»the people«) is always right and there is no reason to despise the so-called masses, i.e. ourselve). Based on that we adept the Greek poleis’ system for our times. That would be the best we could have, I believe. How can we get there?
TL:DR (to the end)
Point is the people cannot vote on issues of the day.
They in fact simply cannot meaningfully vote.
Casting one vote every few years for this or that Party is hardly 'voting' on issues as meant in a working democracy.
It should be understood and emphasised that our 'democratic' mechanisms are makeshifts quite openly. Physical and technological constraints have always applied.
A nation is not Athens of old.
This 'representative' idea is a makeshift. The best we can do.
And Party politics again, a makeshift. The best we can do.
And together they leave the people without a voice. With 'pretended' voice.
That's a simple fact. As simple and obvious as the fact that no one, in politics or outside, is calling for an improvement in the situation.
It seems to be universally accepted that this is the mechanism with which we will always have to work. That this is the best than can be done.
There's no one even calls for the question to be investigated.
But there is something that can be done.
There could be a parallel mechanism or 'thing' that expresses the will of the people in a way of indisputable veracity, authenticity. Nothing to do with the government.
But which, being the authentic voice of the people, the govts. would be wise to heed and would know that.
The people have gotten themselves into a cowed and beaten humiliated and humble position where they not only 'speak when spoken to' but actually never get to speak at all.
And so cowed are they that they never think a solution could be found within themselves: i.e. they have struck themselves dumb. They believe they can only speak if the government lets them speak.
Those who retain some belief in agency and power of the people generally turn in desperation to advocating some kind of violence one way or the other. Which, naturally, most do not want. A coarse, crude methodology that generally fails to improve things in the end anyway, I'm told.
But there is a way it could be done in fact. The people can have a voice and use it at any time and demonstrate that it is their truth authentic voice - not some corrupted result of trickery and manipulation, lies and deceit.
The power to speak could be in everyone's, anyone's pocket or purse:
https://abrogard.com/blog/2023/12/25/dont-write-to-congress/
The elements of it are demonstrated here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_voting_system
When any person can see trough the rethorics (or conceptual models, or stereotypes) and see the people, their goals and their problems, you can not see them anymore as idiots, retrogrades or "far right populists". I experienced the same, fortunately very young. Is difficult to talk with people that are unable to see this, because they don't look the reality, they look and abstraction that believe real (they commite hypostasis).This guy (I mean Aurelien), also helps me with cohesion and connection between ideas, and also he gives birth to new ones.
At least, here in Spain it is obvious that we dont have democracy, not only the one mentioned by Aurelien (the satisfaction of interests of "people"), if not the estrict and estructural one: there is not separation of powers or any mechanysm of control of the power. Also, there is not real periodism and the "forth power" have degenerated. We don't have representation, we vote vor lists made for the chief of the parties (that receive money from the State ¿do you see the perversion? they have achieved the control of the State) that swear obbedience. All the parties weave temporary alliances between them for avhieve the power, using the autonomous administration of provincies for repart quotes of power. It is a fucking network of clientelism, based on a hierarchy of privileges and favours (this network is huge: medias, menay instituiton, ONG's , companies, but also the vanity and the Ego of people). Of coures, all the appearent spectrum is jus the same product with a cosmethical difference, like any other comercial product. Aurelien sais that is a One Partie olygarchical, here we say "partitocracy", that is more or less the same. The parties, their internal struggles ara just these fight between one single elite (with the huge and variant host of parasite and symbiotic that contribuite to this): the oligarchy that oscillate and change in their continious fight for the power, against other parties and also against the own partie. It is just fight for the power with no ethics further this.
Excellent essay.
It seems to me that it confirms one thing: fundamentally, as long as the elites remain united around their common interests and despite constant internal competition for power, there can be no major political change.
For such change to occur, the situation has to be critical enough for a faction within the elites (a counter-elite) to decide to join (or rather recruit) a sufficiently large part of the population by capitalizing on its deep dissatisfaction. And, unfortunately, at this stage and with rare exceptions, it never happens without violence and civil war.
It happened all along human history. In France, we've seen this phenomenon at work twice and in two different forms in recent years: during the "gilets jaunes" episode and during the last elections. Twice, the elites lined up to prevent any attempt at change. And the population, whether in the streets or at the ballot box, has been unable to achieve anything...
And this is somehow what Mélenchon is counting on : a "young, good-thinking Liberal middle classes" counter-elite that will organise and use the immigrant communities to topple the system in his favor.
At the other end of the political spectrum, the question is whether a populist, sovereignist and/or conservative counter-elite will be able to organize the rest of the population.
And of course, what the actual elite will decide to do about that. So far, they've only applied the old principle of divide and conquer but, as the economic and social situation keeps worsening, there is a very good chance it turn real nasty. What's happening in England right now could just be a harbinger of things to come…
Another very interesting piece. An increasing number of bloggers and pundits are now talking in the same vein, whether they call the new elite the PMC, the Blob, the Deep State or whatever.
Of course the pathetic 59% turnout in the UK general election means that the Labour government's mandate and legitimacy is even weaker than it looks at first glance, with just 20% of eligible adults voting for them. It already looks clear that since the growth spurt they talked about is not even remotely on the horizon, their strategy is to manage economic decline by taxing the better off, doing just enough for the poorest to keep them away from Reform and continue to allow mass migration to boost headline GDP figures and supply cheap labour.
This may work for a year or two or even longer but there are widespread forecasts that of another 2008-style economic crisis arriving in the West in the next few years and then we may well see at last, the PMC finally overthrown by populist forces in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.
'Since the collapse in the Scottish Nationalist vote played a large part in bringing the Labour government to power,..'
It played no part at all in bringing the Labour party to power. They didn't need any Scottish seats. You could give every Scottish nationalist vote (many nationalists vote Labour anyway - perhaps 40% of their vote and more- but that's a side issue) in every election held since 1934 (1979 referendum fallout included) and it would not have changed a single UK government.